My Imaginary Adventures

Often times at work someone will see the background on my computer and ask me all about it.  Where was it taken, who took the picture, when did that happen, how was I able to get that picture, and so forth.  It's getting old to explain that I don't know anything about the picture; I just downloaded a batch of backgrounds off Bing, and point to the giant Bing logo on the picture.

So, I started giving explanations of the pictures. 

This picture was taken during my last trip to New York.  I was fortunate enough to be part of the Statue Revitalization Project (SRP).  SRP restores and maintains the statue, a process that takes several weeks and is done every 5 years.  I was in charge of repainting the right arm and hand, and left my initials in the thumb nail.

This was taken in Panama.  I was only interested in the fishing, but ended up an honorary member of the Tishunda tribe, an indigenous tribe that lives along the mouth of the Piwi river as it lets into the sea, where I was fishing.  The down side of this trip was that my guide, Richu, came down with a nasty case of Panamanian fever, more commonly known in the States as influenza.  He spent three days hurling over the boat, which ended up beneficial simply because the regurgitated rice chunks attracted fish like you wouldn't believe.

This was taken during my season aboard Sea Shepard's Bob Barker.  During this photo we were hot on the trail of the Nishan Maru when they had sailed into an iceberg field to try and lose us.  Unfortunately for them the Bob Barker is an ice breaker, and we dove in after them.  Butyric acid in hand, we soon caught up to the Japanese whaling vessel and made our presence known.  No whales died that day.

This picture I had a little fun with.  Meet Bernie, he was a good sport while I took my pictures.  In fact, all of the polar bears in this photo is Bernie.  I overlapped them all to make it look like a whole fleet of bears.  Bernie eventually decided he had enough of the photo shoot and charged toward me.  I took off running, and Bernie made quick work of the tripod I left behind as I ran.

While vacationing in this quaint English villiage my purse was stolen, and all my money and plane ticket along with it.  I was forced to get a short time job that would provide me with enough money to get a plane ticket home.  That is how I found myself as a PA on the set of the last installment of the Harry Potter series.  The weather was gorgeous all week, and then as we started shooting a seen with Voldemort this wicked storm rolled in.  My suspicions have been confirmed that God is a Harry Potter fan.

This was on my Alaskan cruise.  You can see my ship in the harbor, Adventure of the Seas.  This harbor was not on the itinerary, but we ran out of shrimp and a riot started among the other cruise-goers.  After four crew members were trampled, resulting in injuries varying from a black eye to a broken arm, the captain made an emergency pit stop to pick up more shrimp. 

This was during the same cruise.  We were very fortunate to take our cruise during prime aurora borealis season.  Unfortunately, after hiking to this perfect viewing area I reached into my backpack only to realize that I left my camera on the boat.  Not willing to hike down and back up again, yet desperate for a good photo of this phenomenon I punched out another tourist and stole their camera.  I thought the picture turned out nicely, though.

This is my brother, he's an amazing canyoneering guide.  (This is actually true, you can check his website out here.  You should do a canyon with him, it's much like doing a canyon with James Franco, minus being stranded and cutting your own arm off with a pocket knife).  This is the Womamoke waterfall in south Oregon.  He had a great time paddling his kayak around, up until he realized he had no way to get back to the top of the waterfall, where his car was parked.

This is the family vineyard in Tuscany.  It has been in our family for seven generations.  We not only make the most savory of wines, but we also have a large plot where we grow a myriad of flowers for fine perfumes.  I'm next in line to inherit this property, but I think I'm just going to sell it and use the money to buy Neverland Ranch.

Yes, the next time someone asks me about my background they will hear all about it.